After 35 years in the neighborhood, longtime Tribecans David and Judy Gage have moved their string instrument business, Finlay + Gage, to 57th Street. (Thanks to N. for the heads up.) It’s a loss, and the end of an era. I donated a couple guitars there that my children mistreated (F+G in turn fixed them and donated them to schools); it was exciting to see all those beautiful instruments there en masse.

The business spent 30 years ensconced on five floors of 36 Walker until 2021, when they moved to Chambers next to Trilogy Photo.

David is a master luthier and bass player known widely as an innovator of strings technology. Among other inventions, he also sells The Realist, a tiny amplifier that attaches to the bridge of an instrument (its name comes from the fact that the amplification does not color the sound of the instrument in any way — just makes it louder).

The Gages have lived in Tribeca since 1977 — they raised their two children here — and started the business a year later, eventually taking over all five floors on Walker in what was called David Gage String Instruments. Fast forward to 2017, when they opened another store with a new partner — Sam Finlay — in Maplewood, NJ. Hence the new name. The business offers sales, rentals, repairs, consignment — for anything fretted or bowed.

“You name it, we service it,” said Matthew Robinson, the general manager and a cellist who fiddles around with the bass, when they moved to Chambers. “We serve anyone from the New York Philharmonic to the opera to neighborhood families. We embrace the high end classical and the rock musicians.”

When I published the post about their move, Judy commented that their kids — a daughter, Mollie, and a son, Isaiah — had “always been a part of our business — in fact they literally slept among the instruments when we started it all in our loft!”

Find them now uptown!

Finlay + Gage
119 West 57th Street, Suite 602
212-274-1322
info@finlayandgage.com